BEST PLACE TO SEE AND BE SEEN ON A FIRST FRIDAY

With fresh white walls, great lighting and a dramatically high ceiling, this cavernous warehouse turned gallery space not only does justice to the intriguing art on display, but also to the downtown pretty things who turn up in droves on First Fridays to check out the work as well as each other. Any given month, monOrchid might also be hosting a hip local band or DJ, a fashion show, or even film screenings, giving the whole place a kind of dynamic vibe that you would imagine came out of Andy Warhol's Factory -- if only it had cropped up in the middle of the desert, not downtown Manhattan.